Because people are most often morons. Or because most often only the HFs' numbers are available for comparisons. I kind of discovered this thread too late, but nobody pointed out that 5-10 points isn't scalping...First I thought OP meant 5-10 ticks, but anyway, it is moot now...
5 to 10 ticks could be a reasonable target for the well prepared and funded (not margin minimum!!) noob, but 5-10 points!?....yeah right
What is "The Emini"? Are you speaking of the ES contract ? If you are trading the ES, what do you consider "one point"? The ES moves in "handles", and "ticks". There are 4 ticks to a handle. The YM moves in Dow "points". Each point is a tick. The spread on the YM and ES is typically "one tick". If your profit is ten handles on ten trades, and it's $50 per handle, then that equals $500. If you have 3 losing trades in a row and your stop is filled at worst case, 5 ticks below your entry (it's set at 4 ticks by your description), that means you are down $62.50 per losing trade. You would have to have 4 winners in a row to be profitable that day. What I just did is money mgmt. analysis. If you convert your strategy to "code" then you could backtest how many trades fit your criteria daily in the past 'x' days, 'x' weeks, 'x' months. Good luck, hopefully you'll let your winners run longer and tighten up on your losses after you get the hang of it. The most depressing thing in discretionary trading was getting out of winners too early. Hobbs sez {meow}
lol, handle is a nickname newb. 4 ticks to a point. Blind leading blind. http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500_contract_specifications.html